Scientific Journals and Brams Lullaby
by layalatania
Summary: They always knew they would see the world different she looked through a cool shade of indiference he through biological tint. Snapshots of Hoagie and Abby's marriage and family life.
1. Unworthy

** New story multi-chapter although the chapters itself can be attributed as one-shots. Side not for anyone who has read Cafe-au-lait, Hears who sing out loud and Balloon and children are messy business, I will hopefully be going over them these next couple days and rewriting a majority of it, and hopefully adding a new chapter to all three. So look out for that. No promises though. I've been having horrible writers block and I feel this may have helped so enjoy this selection. I enjoyed writing it!**

Twenty three had been a struggling year for Hoagie. Two years before he had married his sweetheart despite his mother's protest to wait it out a little longer, but he knew he loved this woman, a woman he wanted to grow old with, squabble with, comfort, be comforted by. Never had it crossed his mind the thought of children, bleakly they talked about it, in brisk, uncomfortable rushed conversations- she wasn't afraid to have her body change forever- to be torn or stretched in order to house something beautiful.

He could imagine it, she would be one of those beautiful pregnant women who always seemed to glow with a little fetus growing inside of her. The type of woman who would sing lullabies to her growing stomach, jokingly admit she was eating for two as she lay her fingers so sweetly against the swollen skin. Smile gratefully over the grimace of uncomfortable bodily changes occurring, for what she housed in her body was so much more- than anything she could ascribe. Her child he could easily see it. She was a kid person, she could understand them despite their stutters and gap teeth lisp, comfort their tears with soft cooing noises and prattle and play, throw them justly hard as their little bodies could take as fun into a sea of mud and smile so smugly as she threw childish remarks with them.

She was the kind of woman who you expected kids from. The type who saw labor as child's play. But Hoagie, he wasn't worried about her genes she was the perfect biological weapon to have children- he on the other hand was not. Gangly, awkward either to delicate and boorish to keeps a child attention or much to snarky and brusque. He wasn't good with kids, he didn't get them, didn't understand them-and those little things, small specimen of humans frightened him to pieces.

Admittedly he knew he was the type of man who didn't know a lot about children, at least not scientifically. A man of science a man of concrete theories just couldn't fathom, couldn't conceptualize the way children worked-how they thought if they even thought at all. And how was he to readily bring a child into the world, raise it to be an upstanding citizen if he knew nothing of how its mind worked . He tried to understand them, sat through cousin Amelia's tea parties, Little cousin Brian's seasonal baseball league practices, but still knew nothing about those, strange little sprightly creatures who could go from the anomaly of wet molt tears to brimming smiles in two point three seconds.

Hoagie was a child once he reasoned, he did things- sometimes very stupid inexplicable things but couldn't conclude his thoughts to be evident. Afterall childhood had been almost a millennia ago and was as blurry and allusive as the trembling butterflies wrenching up in waves deep in the belly of his chest.

Twenty three had been a very difficult time, he wanted to comfort his wife whose puking sessions of her first trimesters still gave him shivers and suspended his heart to a wave of guilt every time she dry heaved what was left of her lunch. Guilty that it was partly his fault she was in this situation; Hoagie had always been a lightweight drinker afterall, guilty that even though he said it he wouldn't want to switch places with her if it was possible ; guilty that he knew it was a biological response of her body trying to sustain a safe heaven for the impossibly small fetus in her body.

He was resentful of their status at twenty three, angry at the woman who so normally posed what good parents they make for their baby; statistics says young couples; new age _mixed-race_ don't last long with children present, Abby cried then and he hated it. Hated how easily his wife crumbled the pillar of his strength at words of woman they didn't know, angry that he couldn't understand joy of baby's heartbeat or a kicks when science proves this to be a normal biological phenononom of the second term; angry that he reasoned his future wasn't as concrete and conceptualized as he first believed.

She had been restless last few days asked, almost begged him to stay with her- as he at twenty three turned away from her stated that he never asked to be a father. He was afraid she wouldn't love him anymore, she didn't slap nor yell at him, simply place his cold damp fingers onto her impossibly round belly, Afraid when she faced her back to him and coughed with such a rough throaty sound, feverish in her sleep as he whispered sweet nothing to her, afraid when she cried out in pain hours later a month in half early, because the baby was just to big and she was just to small to carry him any longer.

Seven hours later there son was born, wet and bloody screaming out to the world in words only Hoagie could hear in his surrealism. "I'm alive, I'm here!" How Abby had cried out, shrieked in a happiness that went beyond her features, the numbness, the prickling of his skin as the doctors almost stole him away- his son. A possessiveness he had never felt before.

He wanted to attribute it all to science, there had to be a biological, physiological reason children behaved like children, why he had behaved the way he did, the wave of stagnating euphoria, bliss, trepidation as he counted the little fingers and toes, thinking this red patchy few minute old baby is the most beautiful creature in the world- science the stalk and grain of human knowledge declared many reasons for the behavior of children but he still couldn't fathom, couldn't come to wrap his hand around the information of children as he done so easily so instinctively with the small squashy ball of human he held bewildered in his arms. It was a child- well one small metamorphosis from childhood; at least so he thought at the time. A baby he was a holding a baby, not just any baby but his baby- his and Abby's baby a child who had been conceived into the womb of a woman he loved dearly. Their baby, their son, their baby boy. He couldn't understand it; he didn't look like the movies all pale and shiny and new nor all freaky and unsettling as the text book diagrams- but he was beautiful under that veil of wrinkled red skin, blind unseasoned blue eyes squinty and frightened and adorably cute with his frowning puckered lips and tiny pudgy little fingers that gripped onto his chin pinching him in a way as if to say it was all real.

He would understand eventually.


	2. Vol1: Holland

"He's a baby not a science experiment Hoagie!" Turning from the little bundle he looked towards his wife innocently it wasn't his fault the whole swathing process was so intricate and entertaining. A true practiced beauty. Writing down his findings he smiled bemusedly at how easily his wife made the process of folding their new life form into an origami art. She nuzzled and babbled at the little thing who bobbed his head and shrieked out irritable sounds, draping the long soft cloth around his piggly body, cooing, singing and kissing him so tenderly on top of his warm fuzzy head.

Mumbling Hoagie began to write a summary of the interaction between his wife and their little offspring- Holland. _Temperment: Slightly irritable, Current Actions: intrigued by Abigail Lincoln. Comforted by the swathing. Regular bowl movement two hours ago. Feeding: moderate. Process: bottled. Stomach pain: moderate with ejection of milk. Suggestion breast feeding-_Abby grumbled, "You know I really hate when you do that."

He shrugged cutely at her in the same laissez and asinine way he had when they had started dating years ago. The same shrug and sigh he released back then when he assumed she was the weird one for not taking statistical evidence of their thirty seventh date of the year. She concluded he should be lucky they had their thirty eighth after he questioned the waitress if she was ovulating at the moment too, in order to compare temperament between she and his date.

"So..." He continued checking off another mundane observation in his journal titled the properties of child rearing and their consequences Vol. 1: Holland. "I had a suggestion." Hoagie threw up cutely while punctuating more into his journal, "I don't think he likes the whole formula milk thing- he's been throwing up after every feeding. Edison's Baby rearing says-"

"Hoagie..." Abby warned cradling the sleeping bundle onto her large bosom. "I don't need some book to tell me how to raise my own child."

He raised his hand tilting the pencil frantically between his fingers, "Abby I understand that, all I'm suggesting is that we move him to breast-feeding. It's healthier. It will be more beneficial for bonding-"

"Baby," Hoagie felt Abby's fingers plucking the pencil from his forefinger and thumb holding his larger hand closely to her face. Pressing her cheek into his hand, her soft lashes fluttering against the callous of his palm as she looked up at him expectantly. The swathed little baby burbling in his sleep, nose wrinkled as Abby pressed him closer to her chest. "I know how you get with these things."

He eeeped, a high pitched unflattering although cute sound as her fingers slid off his placing them sweetly to the sensitive skin below his jaw. "I love you." She whispered tilting up and sliding onto her toes to come closer to her face. Instinctively he leaned down sealing the height between them to brush his lips onto hers. "Now stop being a charming idiot and hold your son." Her words to anyone else may have sounded scolding and cruel easy to quip the inner child in him who loved the power of science above all other pleasures. But her words spoken gently warmed his insides in a way no statistic ever could and as he placed the little boy close to his sternum, lifting him slightly in the child's deft sleep to nuzzle his forehead against him in a way that was un-biological but instinctive.


	3. Sleep Deprivation

"Damn..."

Roughly her eyes fluttered open. The guttural whimpers merely a soft humm from down the hall had her body wrenching upright and brain set in a tizzy. Her husband sheathed with a large surface of the bed and even larger portion of the blankets rolled and nudged deeper onto her side. Hoagie grumbled in his sleep eyebrow twitching low onto his brow as the soft hollow cries dived into a high pinched frenzy.

Working her foot out of the tangles of the cover, she never understood how by the end of night she would always find herself a prisoner in her own bed; she twisted quietly out of the heavy material. Prickling up to the coldness Abby shuttered as she fully dislodged her foot. Reaching awkwardly out of the bed she lifted herself up like a flamingo ready to swing the other leg to the ground. In mid swing a clasping warmth claimed her ankle. The sensation and surprise sent a gasping Abbigail Gilligan to be full clandestinely back onto the lump bed onto the taught naked skin of her husband.

Obsidian met murky ocean water, clear blue eyes lucid in their brief stint of sleep focused on her flustered face, "Abby?" He questioned leaning up in such a way the small curved woman fell down comfortably to a straddling position on his hips. His fingers long and broad slid down the curve of her neck nursing the blushing heat she acquired from the frenzy. She dipped in an effort to create some leverage of removing herself from him, but the wanton grunt the man released, the falling of his other hand onto the curve of her hip and his head falling dangerously into the shallow of her sternum gave her warning.

Her voice breathy and deep shifted slightly away,"Hoagie..." head turning into a familiar angle as his mouth approached her, "th-the baby." she whimpered under his lip.

"He isn't crying anymore." The man mused pulling the sitting woman higher onto his hips. With a grace that always tended to surprise Abby Hoagies fingers practiced and precision on the delicate throttles of machinery kneaded firmly into her back. She moaned into his mouth finding the space between them closed once again.

"Abby-" A startling crash sent both occupants up on their feet.

"Shit!" Loosening herself from her husbands caged hands Abby bounced to her feet and took off down into the silence of the hallway. Rubbing the tiredness from his red eyes and trying to settle his aroused state if only for the moment before nuzzling deeply into the covers, saddling back up into a sitting position. He removed himself from the warmth of the comforter and petulantly made his way down the hallway.

Inside the room Abby coddled the infant bouncing it lightly in her arms as she hummed under her breathe. Laying soft subtle kisses onto the baby's tiny forehead and clenching fingers trying to relax him. She looked lovely, motherly as he always imagined her, despite the deep ringlets of dark spots the shakiness of her sleep-deprived body as she swung the baby brazenly around the room in order to quell his tears.

Abby approached his wife shadowing her small tiny figure under his. Sometimes in all her charisma and strength he forgot how small, waif and fragile she truly was. "Hey babe why don't you go lay back down." He grinned at the whining, squirming little bundle wrapped snugly on top of her still full breast. "I can handle this." He choked back his indignation watching as an abundant number of emotions clouded Abby's face before she readied herself with her trusted poker face. "Don't you trust me?"

She without hesitation sent him a disbelieving look, before snorting under her breathe. Her eyes turned to the reddening bundle and then back to the tall gangly form of her reddening husband as he began to pout. Steadying Emile into her husbands waiting arm she almost smiled at the scene of how small the babe looked and how comfortable he seemed in her husbands strong arms.

She swept her fingers across the bridge of the babies nose, before lifting herself to her tiptoes and planting a fluttering kiss onto a soft slightly dampened torso. "Be good to my baby, baby." She whispered twisting her hip slightly higher than usual as she exited the room.

He whistled a heavy breathe, before clearing his mind of his cheeky wife. Looking at the baby as his blue eyes fluttered close, Hoagie grinned. This was going to be easy.

!-!-!

After three unsuccessful hours of trying to put the half-asleep baby back into the crib, he groaned finding his attempts completely unsuccessful. He was half-attempting to slip a little thing of brandy down the baby's throat but found instead himself slurping down the small content of the shot before pointing stupidly at the baby completely fascinated as the baby's eyes crossed cutely staring at the finger sitting on the bridge of his nose.

"You." Emiles little head poked up in attempt to focus his attention, as giddy bubbles dribbled down his lips giddy at watching his father look so pathetic. "Are the devil." Rubbing the redness of his eyes Hoagie bounced the baby gently on his knee. "All I wanted was a little nookie..." He cried giving the wide awoke giggling baby the death stare.

Hoagie sighed grabbing his chin as he hand stroked the growing stubble, laying his head on top of the boys he stared him hard into the eye fiercely engulfing the child in his shadow before blinking slowly. The infant only blinked back causing the man's tough face to fall as he resorted back to his last resort, "Please I'm begging for the twenty-seventh time- go to sleep!" The man begged.

Emile garbled enjoying the spectacle of his father trying to reason with him. Happy to be praised with so much attention the baby squealed out loudly in laughter. "No! No! Okay, you don't have to go sleep just be quiet, please!" Cried Hoagie tightening his finger only a smidge more in nervousness as he picked the baby up pushing his hands out in full height above his head.

The excitement and jubilation of being rocked and carried like airplane only made Emile cry out louder bubbles of drool swimming out of his mouth. A large wet slurp hung from the screaming baby's mouth as he wriggled and cried out at the pitch of an ambulance siren. A large cold dollop found itself lodging right onto the right of Hoagie's cheek.

Frozen to a point that couldn't enter his mind any longer. Hoagie calmly brought the baby down the face height. Taking four large strides to the immaculate state of the art crib he persuaded (cried and whined) to buy in order to take care of every sleeping need a baby would need. Placing little laughing Emile inside the large barren tank taking four paces back to the center of the room where he completely freaked out.

A warm tinkling laughter stilled his movement as the man removed himself from the heap of the floor feeling his face raw from carpet burn as he attempted to exfoliate the skin where the drool had dried onto. "It's not funny." He whined lightly fingering the subtle burn.

"Fool, you just mowed your face against the carpet, how is that not funny."

Hoagie grumbled crossing his arms as his chin tucked down into his chest. "Don't laugh."

"Don't be mad baby." Her tinkly voice dulling his embarrassment as the throaty quality caused his chest to stir pleasantly. "I'll make it up to you."

"buh-but the baby?"

"Is asleep." she responded her eyes taking a hooded look. Turning back he found a softly snoring Emile with bright wet lips lined with a smile from to ear to ear.

!-!-!

Hoagie yawned stretching out the taught muscles as he lazily closed his eyes, feeling more pleasurable and ignorant of the bright stretch of sun entering the window. He turned finding his wife returning from her shower dressed up to her jeans as she worked her shirt on.

Laying his head firmly onto his pillow snuggling deeper into the softness. "Abby..." He called. She hmm in return turning with a fresh floral shirt, "Can you turn to page fifty-seven of my journal under sleep cycle."

Abby's fingers flipped softly through the pages eyes rolling as she her eyes skimmed the content.

_Day thirty-two firm sleeper we wont have any problems in the near future_

_Day thirty-nine a suspected case of night-terrors suggestions feed earlier in the day_

_Day forty-five he has to have nocturnal personality_

_Day forty-eight still not asleep_

_Day fifty-one got to by ear plugs_

_Day fifty-six he isn't human_

She casually walked over placing the journal candidly by his head as the man produced a pen from under the bedsheets, she didn't even want to guess how he got there and how in the hell it hadn't struck either one of them earlier during their activities.

He stroked in a large furious scribbles with his head still firmly entrenched inside the comfort of his pillow. And threw the journal to the other side of the room.

_Day Fifty-seven DEVIL_


End file.
